The Poor State of Healthcare in Pasni

People of Pasni, Gwadar have to travel to Karachi or Turbat for some basic health facilities.

It is the Rural Health Centre, Pasni, a small town and a tehsil of Gwadar in Balochistan, where patients come from far flung villages for the treatment but the hospital lacks basic health facilities let alone the standard health care.

Pasni has over 200,000 registered population. But there are only five doctors in the hospital of which two are lady doctors. Hence women have to wait not for days but for months for doctor’s appointment.

Gwadar holds the central position in China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) and the Government has dubbed it as future ‘Dubai’ or ‘Hong Kong’. Despite such claims, there is little change in the lives of the common people who want basic health services in their own city.

Naz Khatoon, whose son is suffering from diarrhea, is complaining that she was not given free or subsidised medicines by the hospital.

Besides poor healthcare, there are no free medicines available at the hospital for the poor Patients. Naz Khatoon, whose 40 days old son contracted diarrhea, is not being provided with any medicine by the government hospital. She has to purchase it from the pharmacy.

Dr. Nazir Ahmed, the in-charge of Pasni Rural Health Centre says that the hospital doesn’t have basic and compulsory facilities like blood group testing equipment. Thus the patients have to travel to distant cities like Turbat or Karachi for tests and scans.

He further complained that due to the absence of blood bank, it becomes quite difficult to provide blood in case of emergency. “Three patients lost their lives for not getting the blood transfusion on time.”

Dr Ahmed is also of the view that the quarterly quota of medicines provided by the government is not sufficient for an ever increasing number of patients.

Arthi Dev is working with PakVoices as a citizen journalist from Pasni, Gwadar.